O’Nan says “every journalist wanted to take me to a Red Lobster” when that novel was published in 2007, so his wife suggested he seek out more glamorous material.

“What do I know from glamour? I’m from Pittsburgh,” he says. “But American glamour is Fitzgerald on the Riviera. American glamour is Greta Garbo. So what if I look at one of the most romantic places in American history (Hollywood in the late 1930s) through the eyes of our greatest romantic. If I can’t make that glamorous, I’m not trying.”

Check out the podcast featuring Theodore Weesner’s The True Detective at Book Fight:

We welcome special guest Stewart O’Nan, author of The Odds, Last Night at the Lobster, A Prayer for the Dying, and many, many more, to discuss a book he calls “a great American novel no one has read.” Theodore Weesner’s The True Detective tells the story of a child’s abduction from multiple perspectives: the family of the victim, the kidnapper, and the detective attempting to break the case. But this isn’t your run-of-the-mill procedural; instead the book seeks to mine the the complicated emotional terrain of its characters, exploring how they’re affected by this web of tragedy.

And in case you missed it, NPR Books is featuring an essay by Stewart:

Ode To The Dead: In Remembrance Of Characters Past

I first heard of Christie Hodgen way back in 2001, when I was a judge for the National Endowment for the Arts. Her story of a younger sister dealing with a troubled, possibly mentally ill brother flat knocked me out. The other judges on the panel agreed — here was a powerhouse writer. I felt privileged to read her work before the rest of the world, so why did it take me so long to discover her second novel, Elegies for the Brokenhearted, which came out last summer?